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The history of mankind is the history of ideas. For it is ideas, theories, and doctrines that guide human action, determine the ultimate ends men aim at, and the choice of the means employed for the attainment of these ends.

Ludwig von Mises

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Ludwig von Mises
Age: 92 †
Born: 1881
Born: September 29
Died: 1973
Died: October 10
Economist
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Lemberg
Austria
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Mises
Humans
Theory
Guide
Mean
Choices
Guides
Men
History
Aim
Life
Means
Doctrine
Action
Determine
Doctrines
Ends
Ultimate
Attainment
Ideas
Choice
Theories
Human
Mankind
Employed

More quotes by Ludwig von Mises

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Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments. They must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe.
Ludwig von Mises
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Government means always coercion and compulsion and is by necessity the opposite of liberty.
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Government and state can never be perfect because they owe their raison d'être to the imperfection of man and can attain their end, the elimination of man's innate impulse to violence, only by recourse to violence, the very thing they are called upon to prevent.
Ludwig von Mises
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Planning other people's actions means to prevent them from planning for themselves, means to deprive them of their essentially human quality, means enslaving them.
Ludwig von Mises
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On the unhampered market there prevails an irresistible tendency to employ every factor of production for the best possible satisfaction of the most urgent needs of the consumers. If the government interfered with this process, it can only impair satisfaction it can never improve it.
Ludwig von Mises
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The market system makes all producers responsible to the consumer.
Ludwig von Mises
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Experience shows that nothing is operated with less economy and with more waste of labor and material of every kind than public services and undertakings. Private enterprise on the other hand naturally induces the owner to work with the greatest economy in his own interest.
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Economics must not be relegated to classrooms and statistical offices and must not be left to esoteric circles. It is the philosophy of human life and action and concerns everybody and everything. It is the pith of civilization and of man's human existence.
Ludwig von Mises
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As the prosperity of the nation and the height of wage rates depend on a continual increase in the capital invested in its plants, mines and farms, it is one of the foremost tasks of good government to remove all obstacles that hinder the accumulation and investment of new capital.
Ludwig von Mises
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The masses, in their capacity as consumers, ultimately determine everybody's revenues and wealth.
Ludwig von Mises
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The inequality of income and fortunes is essential in capitalism.
Ludwig von Mises
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A higher standard of living also brings about a higher standard of culture and civilization.
Ludwig von Mises
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The system that would stand midway between capitalism and socialism.
Ludwig von Mises
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Violent resistance against the power of the state is the last resort of the minority in its effort to break loose from the oppression of the majority. ... The citizen must not be so narrowly circumscribed in his activities that, if he thinks differently from those in power, his only choice is either to perish or to destroy the machinery of state.
Ludwig von Mises
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There is no use in deceiving ourselves. American public opinion rejects the market economy, the capitalistic free enterprise system that provided the nation with the highest standard of living ever attained. Full government control of all activities of the individual is virtually the goal of both national parties.
Ludwig von Mises
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Man is born an asocial and antisocial being. The newborn child is a savage. Egoism is his nature. Only the experience of life and the teachings of his parents, his brothers, sisters, playmates, and later of other people FORCE HIM to acknowledge the advantages of social cooperation and accordingly to change his behavior.
Ludwig von Mises
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Society is only possible on these terms, that the individual finds therein a strengthening of his own ego and his own will.
Ludwig von Mises
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History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents.... A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.
Ludwig von Mises
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War can really cause no economic boom, at least not directly, since an increase in wealth never does result from destruction of goods.
Ludwig von Mises
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Reason is the main resource of man in his struggle for survival.
Ludwig von Mises